All right, I'm really hating the new Exposé.
From a usability standpoint, it's really downgraded by the new scaling feature. Previously, activating Exposé caused your application windows to decrease in size so that all windows could be shown at once. However, the scale of each window was roughly preserved - a window twice as wide as another would still be twice as wide in Exposé. This made for a good frame of reference: we all know that iTunes is larger than a Finder window, for example, so going into Exposé you could more easily know what to look for based on the size.
Unfortunately, the scaling completely removes that frame of reference. Now iTunes and a Finder window are roughly the same size, and you're forced to examine the contents within each window pane to figure out which one you wanted. Yet this becomes very tricky, because very large windows shrink down by quite a bit and it becomes even harder to discern what's in them. One nice usability feature that's been added in is "quicklook" - allowing you to quickly bring an Exposé window up to its full size by hovering over it and hitting the spacebar - yet this is still far inferior to the old Exposé, which required virtually no time and no thought process to pick out which window you wanted.
I largely activated Exposé through hotcorners. My upper right corner was for all applications, and the lower right was for the active application. Combined with a very fast mouse speed, I was very used to hitting those two corners regularly to sift between windows. It's now very difficult. I get the impression that this new Exposé was designed based around people who primarily used the Dock (which I keep hidden and have traditionally used only for launching programs). It's not only that Exposé can now be activated through the Dock, but also that the application-specific Exposé no longer brings all of the windows to the forefront (which it used to). A Dock navigator wouldn't have a use for that feature, because just clicking the program in the dock would bring all of its windows to the forefront.
It makes me realize how much I used and relied on Exposé, and I sort of wish that I could downgrade to OSX 10.5 effortlessly to retain that functionality. It seems that many people dislike the new Exposé. When Apple updates their Mac OS X feedback page to include 10.6, I will certainly express my displeasure and request that they at least give us the option to return to the old Exposé style. If enough people request it, hopefully they will add it back.
If you want to provide feedback on it as well, please head to
http://www.apple.com/feedback/macosx.html and share your thoughts.
Finally, the aesthetics behind Exposé are a bit poor. It used to be that hovering over a window would highlight it (the color would be based on your system's highlighting color). In 10.6, the window is simply highlighted around the edges. I don't actually care about this aspect too much (although many people feel that the highlighting color is ugly and out of place), but I think that the highlighting is less effective than the shading.
I just discovered another thing that I dislike about it - either form of Exposé brings up the Dock, and for the application-specific form it'll highlight which application you're putting through Exposé. That further cuts screen real estate for Exposé to use, further cramping things. It's also totally unnecessary.
Yes, very displeased with that indeed.
